Four months before the pandemic shutdown, I started working from home. Which meant I missed the first coronavirus case that came through the office. My work from home desk for the past year was a pair of printer tables in the corner of my dining room. I recently replaced one of the printer stands with a $75 mobile standing desk from Amazon. I’ll talk about the standing desk, the set up for my work laptop, and my first week standing while working.
SIDUCAL Mobile Standing Desk
Amazon has many mobile standing desks in the $50 to $100 USD price range. The common design is a split desktop with knobs to adjust the height of each half on a wheeled base. The keyboard desktop can adjust from 28″ to 46″ in height and tilt from 0 to 90 degree. The monitor desktop can adjust from 28″ to 47″ in height. The footprint is 22″ x 22”, and the desktop is 24″ x 24″.
I bought the SIDUCAL mobile stand up desk and it took a week to arrive at my doorstep. The box was 27″ x 27″ x 5″ and weighed 25 pounds. One of the few times that I don’t mind UPS dropping a package on my doorstep. No one was going to walk off with a 25-pound box.
Since I built IKEA furniture in the past, it took me 30 minutes to assemble the desk. The first illustration to assemble the keyboard desktop was incomprehensible. I found it easier to assemble in reverse order by starting with the wheeled base. I set the keyboard desktop to 39″ tall, or 10″ taller than typical desk height, and tilted upward by a half-inch. The monitor desktop I set to 45″ tall, or 6″ taller than the keyboard desktop.
Desktop Tech Setup
On the monitor desktop, I have an Acer K242HL 24″ 1080p monitor on a Ergotron monitor stand. An Amazon 4″ USB desk fan to keep me cool when that part of the dining room warms up in the afternoon. An Anker wireless USB charger pad for my iPhone and an Identiv USB card reader on the left. An Adesso USB numeric keypad on the right for entering the PIN to my admin security token.
On the keyboard desktop, I have my Dell work laptop and the Logitech Trackman trackball. A HDMI right-angle cable adapter to send the video cable straight to the back and not to the side. An Anker USB 3.0 hub with a two feet cable mounted underneath the monitor desktop.
All the power cables plug into a power strip that I added to the wheeled base. I could unplug the power strip and move the desk out of the way.
Standing Up For A Week
I spent the past week standing up while working from home. The first four to five hours of the day I can stand up and work. After lunch I find myself alternating between standing and sitting. It takes a lot of energy to stand up for eight hours a day.
My productivity took a hit at the beginning of the week. Thinking and standing at the same time was something I haven’t done in years. As I built endurance from doing both at the same time, my productivity has gotten better.
If standing up doesn’t work out, I can always readjust the desk for sitting down and sit on a ComfiLife gel cushion. That cushion made a huge difference when I got it earlier this year.
Buying a standing desk was the best decision I made in 2020. The desk replaced an existing printer stand and expanded the usable surface area. I was able to clean up and reorganize that corner of the dining room. Standing up while working from home may be worth it after all.